Show 'n Tell: Raspberry Pi BLE Midi Bridge Thingy

wim

@hes said:

I assume it would all work fine on a pi zero, but of course there's not a lot of processing power on those. At some point it becomes like the dancing bear: amazing not because it can dance so well, but more just because it can dance at all.

Good stuff. Thanks. I had read something about a headless Sonic Pi player, but not about various non-GUI ways to interact with it. Anyway, I think that might be pushing the Zero a bit too far given that it does synthesis and sample playback. I also don't want to bother hooking up to a monitor or TV to get sound, so that means an audio adapter, etc. By then I might as well be on my desktop, where Sonic Pi works great.

Actually ... who am I fooling? I'll prolly have to try it some time.

For now, I'm pleased as punch that Orca works on it. Since it's just midi, performance doesn't seem to be an issue.

wim

@audiblevideo said:
One is not a midi thingy pisound https://blokas.io/pisound/

One is a midi thingy midihub https://blokas.io/midihub/

Both a pi based.

Back to @wim and his project.

pisound looks cool. 👍🏼
'lil pricy but very intriguing.

rs2000

@wim said:

@audiblevideo said:
One is not a midi thingy pisound https://blokas.io/pisound/

One is a midi thingy midihub https://blokas.io/midihub/

Both a pi based.

Back to @wim and his project.

pisound looks cool. 👍🏼
'lil pricy but very intriguing.

Patchstorage has a lot of PureData related patches, plus a huge bunch for the Organelle.
Wouldn't the Organelle be another good option on the Pi?

rs2000

Norns:

https://llllllll.co/t/diy-norns-shield/27638

https://llllllll.co/t/fates-a-diy-norns-dac-board-for-raspberry-pi/22999

And a simple MultiTap delay:
https://patchstorage.com/mtd/

audiblevideo

@rs2000 said:

@wim said:

@audiblevideo said:
One is not a midi thingy pisound https://blokas.io/pisound/

One is a midi thingy midihub https://blokas.io/midihub/

Both a pi based.

Back to @wim and his project.

pisound looks cool. 👍🏼
'lil pricy but very intriguing.

Patchstorage has a lot of PureData related patches, plus a huge bunch for the Organelle.
Wouldn't the Organelle be another good option on the Pi?

I don’t think there’s and Organelle os or app. But pure data runs on the Pi so it’s functionally similar to an Organelle minus the hardware. I’m sure some hardware/software nerd could patch/hack/solder up a home brew version. That’s partly what the Pi GPIO pins are for.

There IS an Organelle OS but it’s not opensource.

Organelle OS 4.0 adds many features and updates. It is also the first OS update since the release of the Organelle M, and it brings many of the features in the M to the older Organelle 1.

Features and Improvements:

Improved MIDI performance from the 1/8" jacks.
Fixed bug in MIDI setup that caused MIDI clock problems in patches.
Improved VU meter with peak indication. The last bar is now a peak indication that will stay lit for half a second whenever the audio peaks out of range.
Improved input VU metering.
Added VNC support. This used to be a separate patch (thanks to @thetechnobear for making this available), and now it is part of the OS. Under the WiFi menu you can start a VNC server and then patch the Organelle from a remote computer.
Added Access Point configuration options. You can now use a custom name and password for when the Organelle operates in AP mode.
Added a OLED graphics message for full frame. Developers making graphic patches can now send entire frames to the OLED screen.
Updated Pd to version .49 on the Organelle 1. Now both Organelles are running the same version of Pd.
Includes the latest set of factory patches.
Numerous small tweaks and fixes.
The OS update is available as a 'disk image' that must be burned onto the SD card. There are instructions for doing this in Chapter 7 of the manual

audiblevideo

Engadget article

https://www.engadget.com/2019-07-16-organelle-m-portable-hackable-music-computer-hands-on.html

The new Organelle M is powered by a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3+. It's built on the same core ARM architecture as the original, which means patches should work on both devices. But the Pi has twice the RAM, and its 64-bit quad-core CPU is quite a bit more powerful than the single-core 32-bit chip inside the 2016 model. That should mean that more-complex and demanding patches will run more smoothly, and it may even open up more programming possibilities.

u0421793

I tried Sonic Pi a few years ago on a Pi 2B I have mounted in the Raspberry Pi touchscreen and all I saw was a few coloured rectangles and no way of using it. I presumed it was faulty software and didn’t work. I should try it again to see if has been fixed on piOS.

seonnthaproducer

Great job, wim.

espiegel123

@wim: I haven’t run into this problem with my RPi Bluetooth midi setup, but a friend mentioned that that the RPi kernel stops paying attention to midi if a certain amount of time goes by without any MIDI and then wakes up when MIDI resumes but might lose a few messages when it wakes up. He has wondered if there is some setting in the MIDI library that might prevent that.

RedSkyLullaby

Impressive

wim

@espiegel123 said:
@wim: I haven’t run into this problem with my RPi Bluetooth midi setup, but a friend mentioned that that the RPi kernel stops paying attention to midi if a certain amount of time goes by without any MIDI and then wakes up when MIDI resumes but might lose a few messages when it wakes up. He has wondered if there is some setting in the MIDI library that might prevent that.

Sorry, I don't have any information about that. I've never come across any mention of that happening, and haven't done enough testing to see if it happens with this setup. I may be able to do some testing, but not until later this week.

TonalityApp

@wim This looks really cool! I was actually considering getting a raspberry pi for similar purposes – you may have convinced me.

Keyb

@wim Built my first prototype on a 3B I had laying around and it's working like a charm with 3 controllers attached. Thank you again for the heads-up!

Keyb

@wim said:
You don't need a display of the connections since they happen automatically, but the little web-page extension I did for it can be kind of handy if you don't have ready access to ssh. I'd need to write up some instructions for how to do that.

If you do want to do the web piece, it's a tiny bit easier if you don't do the steps to enable read-only until after that bit, but still doable.

Do you have it available somewhere?

espiegel123

I’ve been using the RPi as a MIDI Bluetooth hub for about a year to use MIDI Designer Pro with a Boss Katana amp because the Katana won’t communicate with an iPad via a direct wired connection. It works great.

wim

@Keyb said:

@wim said:
You don't need a display of the connections since they happen automatically, but the little web-page extension I did for it can be kind of handy if you don't have ready access to ssh. I'd need to write up some instructions for how to do that.

If you do want to do the web piece, it's a tiny bit easier if you don't do the steps to enable read-only until after that bit, but still doable.

Do you have it available somewhere?

Cool, I’m glad it’s useful for you. 😎

I’ll need to gather the bits together and write up installation steps. It basically involves installing Nginx and the fastcgi extension to execute a small python script.

Unfortunately I’m traveling for a few days.

Have you already made the pi read-only. If so there is an additional step to make it work.

wim

@TonalityApp said:
@wim This looks really cool! I was actually considering getting a raspberry pi for similar purposes – you may have convinced me.

I’m having a lot of fun with it. Nothing super practical, but really satisfying somehow. I’ve got ideas now for trying to do more advanced routing, channel management, etc.

Hopefully some time I’ll get back to making music.

cyberheater

That’s very cool wim.

I do love those microcontrollers. My old 80s Midi keyboard died which turned out to be the processor. I replaced it with an Arduino Mega scanning the keyboard and outputting midi messages. I even added midi merge. I think I was smarter back then.

I’m going to look into the Bluetooth midi stuff. It has a lot of possibilities.

wim

@cyberheater said:
That’s very cool wim.

I do love those microcontrollers. My old 80s Midi keyboard died which turned out to be the processor. I replaced it with an Arduino Mega scanning the keyboard and outputting midi messages. I even added midi merge. I think I was smarter back then.

I’m going to look into the Bluetooth midi stuff. It has a lot of possibilities.

Wow, that’s impressive. I wouldn’t have thought to do something like What you did with the keyboard. I’ll be interested to hear if you make something.

This project was good because all I had to do was follow directions. Someone else did all the work. But then, dissecting each step taught me a lot and, like you say, triggered lots of other ideas.

drcongo

I have no use for this at all, but it’s hella cool. Nice one @wim

wim

@drcongo said:
I have no use for this at all, but it’s hella cool. Nice one @wim

I don’t either, really.

RUST( i )K

A> @wim said:

So ... as often seems to be the case, I made a thing that I personally don't have a practical use for, but couldn't resist as a geek challenge.

It's a MIDI host made from a Raspberry Pi. It interconnects USB Midi devices, and allows you also to connect to it by Bluetooth. What this means is all the connected devices can send midi to/from each other and to/from an iOS device connected via Bluetooth.

So, if for instance you have a Novation Circuit, a Digitakt, and a MIDI keyboard all connected to a hub, you can connect to the host from an iPad, and all four devices will be able to share MIDI. Why would you do that when you could just hook the iPad up to the same USB hub as the rest? Well ... I dunno! But it's cool. I guess, if you had your hardware setup in one place and wanted the flexibility to run it all from across the room or something. Or, if you have hardwire that can't talk to other hardware except through a host. Or something?

I built it on a $10 Raspberry Pi Zero W, chosen for the low cost, tiny size, and low power consumption. Any Pi with Bluetooth would do however. I added a small LCD display, but opted later to make a web server for it that would show the status instead. This cuts down the cost and makes for a simpler and less fragile device.

Here's a picture of the unit with the display:

And without, using the web status page:

The idea and 90% of the configuration came from here:
https://neuma.studio/rpi-as-midi-host.html. I wrote the web-display piece, which actually isn't all that necessary since the device is really connect and forget. But it's nice to see what's going on, especially if things aren't working as they should.

If anyone is thinks they'd have a use for something like this, or is just interested in a a bit of geeking out, I'll be happy to discuss.

Great thread

wim

@Keyb said:

@wim said:
You don't need a display of the connections since they happen automatically, but the little web-page extension I did for it can be kind of handy if you don't have ready access to ssh. I'd need to write up some instructions for how to do that.

If you do want to do the web piece, it's a tiny bit easier if you don't do the steps to enable read-only until after that bit, but still doable.

Do you have it available somewhere?

Hi - I wrote up the directions but will admit I haven't tested them thoroughly yet to be sure there aren't any mistakes or omissions: https://wiki.audiob.us/doku.php?id=diy_bluetooth_midi_bridge#web_status_display. I do plan to do a from-scratch build to test out the directions, but don't really want to tear down my working unit just now to do it. Apologies in advance if they need work.

[edit] sorry, I just realized I forgot a few important steps. Hold off a bit until I can add them
tomorrow.

[edit 2] ok, fixed now.

wim

OK Kids! Here's another nifty little science project. With very little work, you can turn a Pi Zero into a class compliant USB midi device. Note, this is not the same as the BLE Midi bridge described in this thread. That's a host. This is a midi controller. It can be plugged in to an iOS device directly, through a hub, or even plugged into the BLE Midi bridge described above.

This could open up some interesting possibilities, such as running Orca or other Linux compatible sequencers, or messing around with some of the interesting Python libraries such as Mido - Midi Objects for Python, or even interacting with the GPIO pins to make USB midi controllers.

I was able to run Orca to play apps on the iPad via BLE Midi and directly attached through the Apple CCK. It worked well both ways.

Note: it'll only work with the Pi Zero or Zero W. It won't work with other models due to something I don't fully understand about the USB port/chip used.

1. Starting with a working Raspberry Pi OS on the Zero, shut it down and mount the SD card in a computer which has a text editor.
2. In the boot partition, edit config.txt and add the following line at the end of the file
   dtoverlay=dwc2
3. Edit cmdline.txt: you will be adding modules-load=dwc2,g_midi in-between "rootwait" and whatever follows, separated by a single space. Note that this is all on one long line. The line should end up looking something like this:
   console=serial0,115200 console=tty1 root=PARTUUID=e0b4f0a3-02 rootfstype=ext4 elevator=deadline fsck.repair=yes rootwait modules-load=dwc2,g_midi quiet splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles
4. Eject the SD card and stick it in the pi, then boot up. If you plug it in to an iOS device, it should show up as "MIDI Gadget". If you plug it in to the BLE Midi bridge, it should show up the same there.

The rest is up to your imagination.

rs2000

Imagine a MIDI sequencer or algorithmic generator with a UI written in Javascript that works on every old smartphone browser 😃

Will

This is awesome. Nice work, Mr. Wim.

hes

@rs2000 said:
Imagine a MIDI sequencer or algorithmic generator with a UI written in Javascript that works on every old smartphone browser 😃

Orca is self-described as "an esoteric programming language designed to quickly create procedural sequencers," but I think another good description could be (at least for version linked below) "an algorithmic midi generator written in javascript that runs in your browser":

run it in your browser: https://hundredrabbits.github.io/Orca/

github repo: https://github.com/hundredrabbits/Orca

The algorithmic generator running vcv-rack:

wim

@hes said:

@rs2000 said:
Imagine a MIDI sequencer or algorithmic generator with a UI written in Javascript that works on every old smartphone browser 😃

Orca is self-described as "an esoteric programming language designed to quickly create procedural sequencers," but I think another good description could be (at least for version linked below) "an algorithmic midi generator written in javascript that runs in your browser":

Orca can also be run in a terminal window. It's easy to get up and running on a Raspberry Pi. I have it running on both the BLE Midi Bridge and on the MIDI Gadget described above. It's pretty fun.

I'm interested in looking into whether it could be made to serve up a browser interface from the Pi. My guess is that's asking a bit much of a Pi Zero though.

wim

@wim said:

Next up: seeing if a midi recorder / looper might be practical on this MIDI Gadget.

rs2000

@hes: That looks very good!

@wim: ANSI UI over SSH? 😅